Fountainhead

Just finished reading Ayn Rand's Fountainhead.

There is something about that book that makes you wanna sit up n think... Its not like I could relate to any character as whole nor could i really visualise the buildings described in the book, coz they seemed too beautiful to be true and hence the incomprehension.
if I were to talk about Dominique, I really dont grasp her. I understand her 'reason to be'. its true, the moment you start really likng something/someone, it becomes a threat to your independence. Hence her fear for commitment.
Howard Roark, I understand this fellow a bit more than Dominique. But how can someone be so impervious to people? To be so 'unneedful' for friends or company? His quest for doing what he loves, in the way he loves is what inspires us to be more true to ourselves.
Gail Waynard, I guess he's the only character that I could relate to even a bit. Hardened by his chilhood and driven by a desire to command the city, he establishes a great but sleazy chain of tabloid. He vouches for sleazy n the dis-respectful coz he's learnt early in his life that people are very basal. that this world is such that each man has to fight for himself n that the fight for Honesty is probably the most difficult. Well, that serves him good and soon he commands the fear (but not respect) n awe of the entire city.

This book ends with Gail Waynard becoming a defeated man, a thing that he never thought could possibly happen to him. And that's whatmakes him realize that after loosing his belief, he cannot carry on and becomes just an existing, breathing body not alive any more.
Howard, who has won his struggle against the society of 'second- hander's', continues to live life in the only way he knows- by being true to his passion and with Dominique as his wife.

One man who looses everything he had including himself and another man who never had anything to loose and hence didnt loose anything.

This book is brilliant in what it wants to convey.The bane of the book is that it conveyed a bit too much at times and that became difficult to handle/grasp